Frontiers of freedom

Front matter

1* '%.

FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM NEWTON D. BAKER

FRONTIERS o/FREEDOM

Preface

Land he reaches into myriad homes ; and even as she wipes away her farewell tear each sweetheart and mother and wife wonders how he will care for her boy.

What, then, does he say and think while the world is being made over? What are the war-time utterances of our Secretary of War? The record has been meager. Secretary Baker speaks always extemporaneously ; there is neither manuscript nor notes. The comments here brought together had to be gathered from more or less fragmentary reports recorded, in most instances, without his knowledge. Indeed, they were seen by him first when these pages were "galleys." .

For those who have known him and, knowing him, have loved him with a great love ; for those who have seen him put the fine impress of his soul into a Nation's armies; for those who have watched him, with the Commander-in-Chief, make this war not the military venture of a class, but the crusade of a people; for those, however humble, who have been privileged to work with him, who have seen him shun the market places, and, in the silent watches, who have learned from his consecration the greatness of the Cause — for those, these chapters need no apology. For the others, these remarks are put into this more permanent form not alone because they are the

[vi]

PREFACE

expressions — albeit impromptu — of the head of the miHtary establishment of a great Republic, but because they seem to speak spontaneously the language of a liberalism that even now is coming into its own.

RaIvPH a. Hay^s

[viil

Introduction

The addresses herein printed were delivered extemporaneously and without any other preparation than constant occupation upon the subjects with which they deal. Because they are the spontaneous reflections of the Secretary of War upon the social, economic and personal aspect of war waged by democracy and waged for very great issues of right, my friend and Secretary, Mr. Ralph A. Hayes, deemed me worthy of so much preservation as nowadays falls to one book more upon the groaning and bulging shelves of libraries. Just how he managed to recover as much as he has I don't know, though the energetic gentlemen who write for the daily press have doubtless been his chief source of supply; so if I should be grateful for being preserved, it must be to him and to them. If any of these addresses appear to have the merit of well-chosen words, I must modestly, but frankly, give the credit again to Mr. Hayes and to Dr. F. P. Keppel, who divides everybody's labors in the War Department and still finds time to read the copies of proofs, which, as I wrote this, I myself have not yet been permitted to see. But I hope these preservers have found in their

[ix]

INTRODUCTION

search the sentences I have sought to form expressive of the meaning of the sacrifice which the world is now making, and therefore the essential glory of it all.

It would be an unbearable thing if this great fire were found to have no purifying quality. I am well aware that the theory of compensation can be pressed too far and that one has to take a long look into a very uncertain and undetermined future even to imagine a world reconstituted upon sufficiently just and beautiful lines to compensate for the agony of this trial to the human race. And yet there are evidences of reassurance on many hands. Our country has responded to this call without passion or evil sentiment, but with its head high and its purposes written on its heart, as they have been wonderfully formulated into words by the President. It is not without significance that, although we have been in this war ten months, there has not yet appeared in any newspaper or magazine, nor has any public speaker ever suggested that we should look for advantage or seek to balance our loss account by the attainment of any selfish purpose.

Meantime the people of our country have lost some sense of distinction which was growing up among us. The democracy of the new military army and of the new industrial army is too large to be obscured, and accepting democracy as "a rule of action rather than social

INTRODUCTION

philosophy," our common effort in this great undertaking seems to promise future common efforts for purposes just as high in the reconstruction of our social and economic organization.

Some one has said that America will come out of this war more a nation than she has ever been. That is true; no more an old-fashioned nation with nationalistic objects and dynastic ambition, but a new-fashioned nation, with sounder attitude toward itself. This new nation will have learned to view in better proportion the importance of sound daily living and of community effort, and perhaps it is not too much to hope that the people of America, in common with the people of the other belligerent countries, will have a firm and fruitful conviction, when the war is over, that the glory of nations does not lie in material things at all, except as they are necessary to condition the development of the finest freedom and the best opportunities for spiritual growth among their people.

Washington,

M